Rohingya Continue to Face Genocide Threat in Myanmar: UN

The minority Rohingya Muslim community living in Myanmar are still facing the threat of genocide, a UN fact-finding mission has found. In a report released on Monday, the UN fact-finding mission said the brutal military operations against the Rohingya in 2017 “are part of a bigger, longer, more general pattern of extreme military violence”.

The report also noted that 600,000 Rohingya remaining inside Myanmar face “systematic persecution” and live under the threat of genocide. “The threat of genocide continues for the remaining Rohingya,” said Marzuki Darusman, Chair of the Fact-Finding Mission.

A year ago, he added, the mission created in 2017 by the United Nations Human Rights Council, had found “genocidal acts” in Myanmar’s 2017 “clearance operations” that killed thousands and caused more than 740,000 Rohingya to flee for their lives to Bangladesh.

“Myanmar is failing in its obligation to prevent genocide, to investigate genocide and to enact effective legislation criminalizing and punishing genocide,” Darusman said. The new report will be presented on Tuesday to the UN Human Rights Council.

“Myanmar’s ethnic groups have a common — but not identical — experience of marginalization, discrimination and brutality at the hands of the Myanmar armed forces, the Tatmadaw,” the statement by the fact-finding mission said.

The report carries interviews of nearly 1,300 victims and eyewitnesses conducted in the last two years from Rakhine, Chin, Shan, Kachin and Karen States. The fact-finding mission called on the international community to demand accountability from Myanmar and “not to lose interest in continuing abuses there”.

Mission Expert Radhika Coomaraswamy said that shedding light on the grave human rights violations that are occurring in Myanmar is very “important but not sufficient”. “Accountability is important not only to victims but also to uphold the rule of law. It is also important to prevent repetition of the Tatmadaw’s past conduct and prevent future violations,” she added.